Roseland Is No Bed Of Roses For Korean Merchants

July 10, 1990|By Marja Mills Tribune reporter Robert Davis contributed to this article.

This is not the America that beckoned Mike Yang from South Korea eight years ago.

In this corner of America, where the 34-year-old Yang and his brother own the Chicago Shoe Mart, at 11232 S. Michigan Ave., litter blows down the sidewalks like tumbleweed. Metal bars go down on store windows as soon as the ``closed`` sign goes up.

The Roseland area is marred by rising tensions between some residents of the black neighborhood and Korean-American merchants, whom neighbors are threatening to picket again later this week.

But this corner of America pays the rent for Yang`s North Side apartment. It promises to pay for his young daughter to go to college someday. It is his. That, some disgruntled Roseland residents say, is a combination that has stirred deep resentments in this Far South Side neighborhood and other mainly black areas of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and other cities.

Residents complain about poor goods and services and what they say is a lack of community involvement. But quickly, their emotion is directed to something bigger, to a sense they are not fully respected by ambitious outsiders who prosper in less than prosperous neighborhoods.

``They take our money, but they don`t put anything back into the community,`` said Patty Young, 32, who attended a heated meeting last week called by Ald. Robert Shaw (9th). Like other residents at the meeting, she complained of inferior merchandise and unfair exchange policies at the rows of stores owned by Korean-Americans in her neighborhood.

Store owners at the meeting said many of the complaints were unfounded, and they asked to be judged individually. Lumping them together racially, they said, is as biased as the actions charged in residents` complaints.

Yang said he and many of the store owners operate fairly and donate to community causes. Korean-Americans who live on the North Side and do business on the South Side feel a double tug for community contributions, he said.

``I`ve got two communities I support,`` Yang said. ``Where I live and where I work.``

After the meeting with Shaw, and a flurry of others this week and last, the alderman has stuck by a Wednesday evening deadline he set for an agreement with the merchants. Shaw said he wants the merchants to agree to hire more black community residents, reinvest profits in community banks and financial institutions and publicly post an agreed-upon refund and exchange policy in their shops.

Shaw said Monday that pickets ``are ready to resume at a phone call`s notice if the Koreans don`t agree to our demands.``

Joining Shaw at a Monday breakfast meeting with Korean-American business leaders were Aldermen Ed Smith (28th) and Danny Davis (29th), who said they have received similar complaints about Korean-American business practices in their West Side wards.

Meetings have been set up by the city`s Commission on Human Relations to quell tensions that have grown since some Roseland residents set up picket lines outside Korean-American businesses on Michigan Avenue and threatened consumer boycotts.

Yoon Lee, a spokesman for the South Side Korean Merchants Association, said store owners hope to negotiate an agreement Wednesday.

``We want to settle it and not have it expand to other (neighborhoods),`` Lee said. ``We want to work with these people. If they want to boycott whoever`s store is doing illegal business, whether they`re Arab or Korean or black, that`s fine.

``But if they categorize the Korean merchants as a group and say they`re doing bad business, that`s a serious civil rights issue. Not just merchants but the whole Korean community is very concerned about that.``

The meeting July 2 was the kind of emotional exchange, this one between about 60 Korean-American merchants and their lower-income black customers, that is taking place in other major cities.

Often merchants are reluctant to join in, pointing to outspoken community leaders like Shaw who they say are more interested in stirring passions than forging compromise.

For storekeepers and residents alike, the frustrations can be all too familiar. Relations remain tense in Chicago between many Arab-American merchants and the low-income neighborhoods where some do business. Jewish storekeepers long have known the same tensions.

So it went last week, with tempers rising all around. There was little agreement except to meet again on Wednesday.

Shaw read from a flier he sponsored that was headlined, ``Lets Take Control of Our Community!``

Of the Korean merchants in the Roseland business district, the flier asked, ``Why don`t they: Treat us with respect. Bank in our banks. Provide substantial employment. Donate to our community activities.``

Over-the-counter matters, such as charge-card and exchange policies, were near the bottom.

Most of the store owners listened quietly as Shaw became more and more animated. Some responded in measured tones to his list of complaints and asked for specific examples of wrongdoing.